CATHERINE WING

CATHERINE WING

PITH & GIST

Once again we amnesiacs were
soaking our beans in some
vinegar and practicing our
theories of forgetting, what we
had and what we knew came in
a series of shallow boxes. The
sparrow’s song competed with
our own, which though cobbled
bright, had a less than durable
filament. We were pictures of a
blue available. We were the floor
models of an old flame. At last
we were getting rid of our lists
of little things. Three moonfuls
ago we were all surf trem with
depth and speed, focus and anti-
focus. And then? Fortune’s
contortion and a run in with the
gut-truck. Since that immoment
moment it’s been nothing but a
cabinet of natural disasters in a
temporary museum. You get the
burden of it. The wind rides in
the dovecote. It’s playing the
devil’s interval.

Calculus

There’s a kind of nothing
you can add something to.
A zero becomes a circle.
A bowl takes an apple
a nest a robin’s egg.
The napkin ring sums the table.
A crown rounds the head
which caps the rest of us
body as remainder.

Milk is measured in a spoon
and light is bound
within its bulb. Every mouth
is edged with teeth.
The O we make we breathe
a cycle wheeling sun
around-go-merrily-we
time’s hem and girdle.

CATHERINE WING was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended Brown University before earning her MFA from the University of Washington. Her collections of poetry include Enter Invisible (2005), nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Gin & Bleach (2012). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, the Nation, and the Chicago Review and has been featured in a number of anthologies, including Best American Poetry (2010).She teaches at Kent State University and with the NEO-MFA, the nation’s only consortial program in Creative Writing.